World Famous Restaurant Launches… Coffee Subscription Service? – CoffeeTalk

Chef René Redzepi of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant and flavor laboratory, Noma Projects, is launching a new coffee membership called Noma Kaffe. The subscription will be delivered worldwide, featuring two 250-gram packages of exclusive whole beans that offer a glimpse into Redzepi’s coffee obsession, featuring selections from small farms and a light Nordic roasting profile.

The subscription is sold through Noma Projects for $65 a month. Coffee service has been an integral pursuit at Noma, which now focuses on a new ingredient each season, currently “ocean season.” The restaurant partnered with World Barista Champion Tim Wendelboe of Oslo in 2013 to source beans and create the coffee service for its tasting menus. Now, it has established its own department under Noma Kaffe to source and roast beans in-house.

Redzepi wanted to ensure that someone would develop a coffee sourcing and roasting program that defines the Noma Kaffe flavor profile, featuring his affinity for Nordic profiles with light roasts, bright acidity, and floral notes. Carolynne Lane, who started at Noma in 2018 as a host and server, now helms the coffee division of Noma Projects, which Redzepi founded in 2022 to showcase and sell ingredients from the restaurant’s workshop.

Supported by Noma head sommelier Ava Mees List and general manager Simon Kofoed Bursche Hansen, Lane works with head roaster Alastair Hesp and head barista Tsubasa Maehiro to develop roast profiles and manage quality control. Redzepi is coffee obsessed and very engaged in the project, and Lane recently spent time on the road in Colombia with Tyler Youngblood of Azahar, a green coffee sourcing company, researching regenerative coffee agriculture in the regions where they sourced beans for later this spring.

The second and third subscription drops will focus on beans from three farmers in Huila, a top coffee-growing region in southwestern Colombia known for award-winning beans that are sweet and fragrant. Lane and Redzepi found inspiration in Japanese cafe culture during Noma’s residency at the Ace Hotel in Kyoto last October through December. Wendelboe and the Noma beverage team created an optimal process to brew coffee during the Kyoto residency: an Americano hybrid prepared by pulling a shot of espresso through an Aeropress filter, pouring the espresso through a V60 filter, then adding a precise amount of hot water to emulate a filter coffee. This method enabled them to brew three cups of coffee from one shot of espresso, with efficiency and consistency as the finale for the dining experience.

Redzepi hints at more plans to expand Noma Kaffe, aiming to have a unique high-quality, best-in-class coffee bar that can be equally as good as all the best coffee bars in the Nordics.

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